Florida governor Ron DeSantis suspended elected prosecutor Andrew Warren for pledging not to use his office to go after doctors that provide gender-affirming care to transgender individuals or people who seek and provide abortions. DeSantis announced he was suspending Warren for “neglect of duty” and “incompetence” as Hillsborough County’s prosecutor (Contorno, 2022). Florida State Statutes ethics code states that no public officer shall use their official position to receive a particular benefit or exemption for themselves or others (2022). For this reason, the governor’s decision caused a wave of condemnation for ethical misconduct and misuse of public position.
An example from the private sector is Florida Power & Light (FPL) and Matrix case when they demonstrated how utility companies and their consultants may work in tandem to resist clean energy reforms. A Democratic state senator proposed a law enabling landlords to sell cheap rooftop solar power directly to their tenants – bypassing FPL. That could cut into FPL’s profits, so they turned to the Matrix consulting company, which managed to get the senator removed.
In these examples, one can feel the difference between ethical conduct in the public sector compared to ethical behavior in the private sector. All officials are faced with discretionary decisions that have to be made all the time. They cannot be avoided, even if the detailed rules and codes of guidance intended to minimize the difficulties are well drafted (Chapman, 2019). Such discretionary decisions had to be made by DeSantis: on the one hand, Warren expressed his intention not to follow the law. On the other hand, he won the election twice, which shows people’s trust in him and his decisions.
The decisive fact was that under Florida law, a governor should remove a county officer for misfeasance, malfeasance, neglect of duty, or inability to perform official duties, which he saw in the statement. The FPL’s example shows that decisions and actions are less tightly regulated in the private sector. Therefore, a great responsibility lies with ethics. When facing the deficiency or even the failure of law and regulation, business ethics assigned a difficult task: monitoring, adjusting, supervising, and punishing unethical and immoral businesses (Bian & Kiymet, 2018). Meeting the challenge to improve ethics in private and public sectors requires understanding ethical behavior and decision-making regardless of the sector.
References
Bian, J. & Kiymet, T. C. (2018). Regulations and applications of ethics in business practice. Springer.
Chapman, R. (2019). Ethics in public service for the new millennium. Routledge.
Contorno, S. (2022). DeSantis suspends Tampa prosecutor who took stance against criminalizing abortion providers. CNN.
Florida State Statutes. (2021). Standards of conduct for public officers, employees of agencies, and local government attorneys. Official Internet Site of the Florida Legislature.